


full of grace

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4901089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's long road home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	full of grace

“Be good.” 

That was the last thing he told Rebecca, when it was time for him to go. Outside, their uncle honked the car horn, and yelled that if he was going to miss his train. Bucky shifted his weight to his other leg and didn’t look his sister in the eye. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, splitting them up like that, but after his dad died, their fates were in other people’s hands. 

His aunt and uncle had wanted to keep Rebecca, but they had never cared for Bucky. They thought he was a troublemaker. They made it clear that he was being sent away against any threat of future trouble. 

Well, that was fine. It wasn’t as if they were wrong, exactly.

Rebecca nudged him with a skinny shoulder and looked up. She didn’t let go of his hand, she clutched it like she wasn’t ever going to let it go. Finally, Bucky knelt down on his knee and looked her in the eye. 

“I better get going now, sis. I can’t miss the train,” he said, trying to extricate himself from her iron grip. 

She gave him a look that was older than her seven years. Then, she pushed her blond hair from her eyes and stared at him, long and quiet. It was a bright sunny day, and light hit her eyes in such a way that they seemed to spark, like the blue edge at the bottom of a candle-flame. They both had the same kind of eyes, their mother’s eyes. Or so his aunt said, and she ought to know, since they had been sisters. She’d looked wistful then, and glanced downward at her work-worn hands, and then back to Bucky and Rebecca. 

Their mother had been a town beauty, and Rebecca looked like she would inherited all of that. 

“You be good,” Rebecca said at last, letting his hand go. She looked like she doubted that he would be. 

He cast his his eyes down and smiled. “I’ll do my best.” 

 

She waved to him from the porch of his uncle’s house until the trees and distance swallowed her up. 

He never saw her again. 

*

Letter after letter, he wrote to her for months afterwards. In them, he described his new life in the city, of the work he did there, and the friends he made. They all came back one day, tied together with a length of rough string. All unopened, stamped return to sender. The county his uncle’s farm was located in had been emptied out, first by the ‘flu, and then by economic disaster. 

Bucky, in Brooklyn, hadn’t been immune. He spent a few weeks flat on his back, sweating the fever out. When he got better, he didn’t write to Rebecca anymore. 

He ought to be used it by now, losing people. First his ma, and then pa, and now Rebecca. 

He was no good at it. Keeping people -- keeping them safe, keeping them alive and near him.

He would get used to it, someday. 

 

But, nonetheless, Bucky might have been good at losing people, but he was also good at find others. Like after the flu, he had been adopted, more or less, by a family who had come from the same place in Indiana as the Barnes had. They were good people, and kind ones, and Bucky learned how it was to have a family again. 

And a friend; just down the hall there was a sickly kid named Rogers who looked at him with fiery eyes that reminded him of Rebecca’s. Bucky followed him around for a few days before introducing himself. In between then, he had realized that Steve was nothing like Rebecca. That kid didn’t have a chip on his shoulder so much as a whole city block. 

Bucky liked him immediately. They fit together pretty well.

*

Bucky would have died that to admit to Steve that, yeah, sometimes still, he still reminded Bucky of Rebecca. That was the thing about Steve -- he could be a prickly son of the bitch when he wanted to be (no offense to the dearly departed Mrs. Rogers, but it was true), and he’s go to his grave saying that he wasn’t a girl -- he didn’t need to be rescued by Bucky. Or by anybody.

Bucky, generally, would agree. That didn’t stop him from looking out for Steve, or making sure that when it came down to a fight, the odds were more in Steve’s favor. 

Bucky never told Steve that he need to protect his friend in a way that he had failed to protect his sister. Nobody needed to know that. Steve, certainly, didn’t need to know that. 

Sometimes, when they would collapse against each other, after a long day’s work, Bucky would flick dried bits of paint from Steve’s blond hair and just remember. Steve stirred against him, his bony shoulder rubbing uncomfortably against Bucky’s. “What’s wrong?” 

Bucky sighed and shrugged, jostling Steve a little. “Nothing. Just -- aw, nothing.” 

Steve smirked at him, like he’d won some kind of victory or something, but Bucky only made a face and plotted the ways he could get him back. 

*

It was a week before Bucky was about to ship out that he got a letter from Rebecca. The postmark was from -- it was from California, of all places, and from a name he didn’t recognize. He tucked it into his pocket and walked up the steps to the apartment he shared with Steve. 

He had something to say.


End file.
